Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Purely electrical integrated circuits, such as those embodied in chips, provide a mechanical and electrical framework for operation and communication among cores and various other components. Electrical communication signals may present inherent limitations on communication bandwidth and quality. For example, electrical signals may be susceptible to interference, such as noise from other components on the chip or from external sources. On the other hand, an increasingly higher number and variety of electronic components may have the capability to support optical communication. Optical communication signals may be less susceptible to interference, compared to electrical communication signals, and ma provide comparatively much wider bandwidths.
Current attempts to support both electrical and optical communications on chips, however, could use some improvements and/or alternative or additional solutions in order to effectively and efficiently communicate optical signals.